192 CRITICISMS ON " THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES " 



and is surrounded by, impulses towards incessant 

 change. 



But the truths just stated are as certain as any other 

 physical laws, quite independently of the truth, or false- 

 hood, of the hypothesis which Mr. Darwin has based upon 

 them ; and that M. Flourens, missing the substance and 

 grasping at a shadow, should be blind to the admirable 

 exposition of them, which Mr. Darwin has given, and see 

 nothing there but a " derniere erreur du dernier siecle " 

 a personification of Nature leads us indeed to cry with 

 him : " O lucidite 1 O solidite de 1'esprit Francais, que 

 devenez-vous ? " 



M. Flourens has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend the 

 first principles of the doctrine which he assails so rudely. 

 His objections to details are of the old sort, so battered and 

 hackneyed on this side of the Channel, that not even a 

 Quarterly Reviewer could be induced to pick them up for 

 the purpose of pelting Mr. Darwin over again. We have 

 Cuvier and the mummies ; M. Roulin and the domesticated 

 animals of America ; the difficulties presented by hybridism 

 and by Palaeontology ; Darwinism a rifacciamento of De 

 Maillet and Lamarck ; Darwinism a system without a 

 commencement, and its author bound to believe in M. 

 Pouchet, etc. etc. How one knows it all by heart, and with 

 what relief one reads at p. 65 



" Je laisse M. Darwin I " 



But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our 

 readers' attention to his wonderful tenth chapter, " De la 

 Pr6existence des Germes et de l'Epignese," which opens 

 thus : 



" Spontaneous generation is only a chimera. This point estab- 

 lished, two hypotheses remain : that of pre-existence and that of 

 epigencsis. The one of these hypotheses has as little foundation as 

 the other." (P. 163.) 



" The doctrine of eptgencsis is derived from Harvey : following by 

 ocular inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor 

 does, he saw each part appear successively, and taking the moment 

 of appearance for the moment of formation he imagined cpigenesis." 

 (P. 165.) 



On the contrary, says M. Flourens (p. 167), 



" The new being is formed at a stroke (tout d'un coup), as a whole, 

 instantaneously ; it is not formed part by part, and at different 



